NBN has announced that its Sky Muster II
satellite is now fully operational and providing
what it says are world-leading services in price per
MB terms, as well as detailing the steps taken to
fix the issues that have plagued it.

NBN has also gone into more detail about plans to
provide an enterprise satellite offering, with chief
customer officer John Simon looking to reassure the
satellite industry that the firm will be augmenting,
rather than carving into, existing markets.

Simon used the Australasian Satellite Forum to
announce what he cast as a significant milestone for
NBN; the firm currently has some 70,000 premises
using Sky Muster services, of a total target of
240,000.

“Despite the issues that we’ve had… we are
still well on track to meeting our end of financial
year goal of 80,000 homes and businesses connected
with the Sky Muster services,” he said. “In support
of that goal… as of a few weeks ago, I’m pleased to
be able to say that after months of rigorous
testing, the Sky Muster II – which was launched last
October – is now fully operational [and] providing
services to remote, regional and rural Australia, as
is its sister satellite.”

Simon did not, however, shy away from the issues
that have dogged Sky Muster. “Service interruptions
and on-the-ground installation problems have been a
source of frustration for consumers, and our RSP
customers. We experienced enormous demand from
regional Australia and some early implementation
challenges, leading to these deployment and
connection issues,” he said.

“These were compounded because at the same
time we were migrating the interim satellite service
base of some 35,000 end users… [which] was a massive
logistical undertaking, [although] we were able to
complete interim satellite migration on time by 20
February.. indeed, at one point we reached 10,000
premises per month for connections to Sky Muster,
which I understand is two and a half to three times
the peak that had previously been reached on any
other satellite rollout program.”

“So it was a brave undertaking… [and] we got
there, but we took a few hits because we found the
logistics and also the network performance we’d
expected wasn’t quite there yet.”

To address these issues, Simon said that NBN had
embarked on a “holistic improvement program”
starting last September with delivery partners.

“We’ve deployed 147 network fixes and
optimisation changes, and since then we’ve seen a
91% decrease in the fault rate occurring on the
network as of April this year,” he said.

“The average weekly rate is now comparable with
other access technologies and, in fact, global best
practice…. we will continue and are optimising the
network further to improve performance.”

“We’ve also overhauled the installation service;
since launch, the average time from order to
installation has steadily decreased, and the ‘right
first time’ performance is above 90%. This has
resulted in an enduser satisfaction score… of 8+
every week from order to install. Three or four
months ago, that was 6.”

“Sky Muster was first designed… to offer
affordable broadband with higher data allowances at
faster speeds. That was the key imperative… and we
believe we’ve achieved that. Sky Muster endusers are
now receiving between 3-5 times the speed and 4-6
times the data allowance for the same price they
would have paid on previous satellite services,” he
said.

“[But] there remains hot discussion amongst some
endusers around data allowances. In 2015, we made
the decision to repurpose the now-operational Sky
Muster II, which had previously been intended to
provide redundancy capacity only… to actively share
the load, and that has meant we’ve been able to
double the capacity available to Australians
connecting to a retail service via NBN satellite.
This has allowed us to bump up the data allowances
and the fair use policy above the initial design,
which allowed for far less than the current 37GB
anytime usage.”

“Despite some negative chatter, we are finding
that the average Sky Muster customer isn’t using the
full data allowance… the median monthly usage as of
February was 17GB, the average 24GB, and the average
anytime usage policy supports up to 37GB. So many
Australians could utilise up to 50% more than
currently.”

Simon asserted that the data allowances on Sky
Muster were “equal to the best offered worldwide on
any satellite services anywhere around the world,”
citing Ovum research.

“In terms of data allowances and the price per
gigabyte that endusers are paying, [Ovum] rates
Australia as a leading satellite provider, up there
with the best – and we’ve continued to improve on
that. In addition to home services we are already
offering larger data plans to RSPs for eligible
schools, health clinics and Indigenous communities
as well as not for profit organisations.”

BUSINESS: Finally, Simon revealed that NBN
expected to have satellite products in place for
business applications within a year, and was keeping
an eye on nextgeneration 100Mbps satellite services
which might be an asset for enterprise – albeit with
an awareness of capacity limitations. However, he
sought to soothe industry fears about competition
from a government backed behemoth. “We’ve been asked
by our shareholders… to provide commercial returns
to Australian taxpayers. We don’t see our role as
coming in and swapping out A for B; there is no
value in attacking a market that’s already served,”
he said.

“Our view, from the discussions we’ve had from a
number of people that knock on our doors… wanting
potential access to the satellite is that there is
demand there for services that isn’t currently being
fulfilled. I actually believe we can provide
services to regional and rural enterprises and
businesses and grow the market, grow the turnover
and grow the services – it isn’t necessarily that we
have to go in as a substitute. Far from it; our
satellites have limited capacity and for us to go in
and attack existing markets wouldn’t add a lot of
value, because we can’t grow. It isn’t about that.”

He also told CommsDay that NBN would be able to
service enterprises via satellite without
compromising the consumer experience.

“The fair use policy for endusers is really
set by those beams that we consider ‘hot beams’,
where there is the most takeup. The good thing about
that is a lot of the business premises aren’t
necessarily located under those hot beams, so we do
actually have capacity that can be used that is
technically idle and isn’t going to get soaked up by
consumers,” he said.

“A lot of business services, also, are used
during the day – which does not have the same usage
periods. So I think we can grow the industry…
without actively compromising or impacting
consumer-based services.” Petroc Wilton, Commsday